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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953324">as i lay dying</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil'>keouil</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Naruto</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-10-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-06 18:34:40</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,723</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/26953324</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/keouil/pseuds/keouil</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>nothing in the world could have ever prepared me for how hard it would be to lose you.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Hatake Kakashi/Uchiha Obito</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>6</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>47</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>as i lay dying</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>kakashi and obito,<br/>from beginning to end.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>the first time it happens, they are six years old.</p><p>for a moment that felt like forever, the world has gone deafeningly quiet. only the faint sound of the wind blowing and someone’s ragged breathing is all he hears. </p><p>there comes a moment for every human when they’re greeted with their own life’s highlight reel. a montage of memories their hearts held dear and kept safely locked away in a corner of their minds for this very reason, to comfort the passing and gifting them one last private show of their golden years.</p><p>that is until someone coughs. </p><p>then a beat.</p><p>with the speed (or lack thereof) of understanding that puts his father’s name to shame, kakashi finally registers the owner of the embarrassingly ragged breathing and barely muffled cough and said dying person in question all the same – that damn uchiha kid.</p><p>he lets out the breath he didn’t even know he was holding and another pregnant pause when nothing else seems to reflect on his mind other than <em>what the fuck.</em></p><p>because one second the boy was hanging by his leg from an old tree branch when the wind blew just a little too strong for his tiny body but before he could even comprehend what just happened, the idiotic fool’s head seemed to have already made a rather permanent dent on the muddy surface.</p><p>kakashi would have yelled for help if not for the obvious deafening silence and breathing and montage and etc still happening and <em> really, what the fuck. </em></p><p>he snaps out of his uncharacteristically slow piecing together of presumed dead turned alive person and is on the boy’s heels right away. now he was a man on a mission. and that was operation never listen to<em> dumb strangers </em> and their <em> dumb watch me! challenges</em>.</p><p>obito, for once, is justifiably terrified. he recognizes the trademark white hair on this kid just as well as he knows the uchiha pledge, and that was saying something. </p><p>as if kakashi as a concept alone wasn’t scary enough, an <em> angry kakashi </em>wasn’t something he’d wish on any anyone ever. to have all that menacing energy directed towards a single source, in this case – his <em> probably </em> dislocated shoulder and <em> surely </em> broken leg and <em> highly possible </em> concussion – the fall from the tree was nothing compared to the only son of the white fang’s wrath.</p><p>it wasn’t until both of them were in the hospital with obito knocked out from the sedatives (he wouldn’t stop screaming that not even threats of bodily violence could subdue the volume of his wailing) and kakashi stood watch with a lengthy book on how to mend fractured bones (for next time because he believes this will be a recurring accident) – they realise this is their first meeting.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>the next several times it happens, kakashi has now learned all about the wonderful powers of deduction.</p><p>never mind that they enrolled in the academy and trained and graduated and even ended up on the same team together, old habits die hard.</p><p>obito once again found himself in various forms of near-death experiences on a daily basis. only now he was too busy to tend to each one of them. because more often than not they usually involved a silly prank or bet or challenge – point is, they were all <em>stupid </em> and <em> non-life-threatening</em>, as he often pointed out. </p><p>so he ignores him just about every time he came hollering about his newest brush with death and passes him off to be someone else’s problem. rin was always more than happy, if not a little coerced, into hearing them out so he left her to deal with his nonsense. </p><p>what obito doesn’t know, and never will, is that same copy of <em> bone anatomy 101 </em> he demanded from the attending nurse when they were six has taken permanent residence in his tool bag since that day.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>then kannabi passes and hasn’t left since.</p><p>kakashi remembers the days, months, years that follow but doesn’t forget what doesn’t – clan brats hanging from trees, idiot classmates with stupid dares, friends he still had so much to learn from.</p><p>he’s not sure he can survive this one.</p><p>not just because minato-sensei has put him on a literal suicide watch but because everything is stagnant and sometimes he fools himself into thinking <em>this is a grieving process</em> but then that doesn’t really add up in his head either because to grieve one must be dead and <em>how can obito be dead</em> when he can feel him <em>looming over his life</em> like a moth to a flame. </p><p>only kakashi is not light so much the darkness that comes after.</p><p>he feels his heart shatter every time he walks on the village and sees a boy with a red crest behind his back and jet black hair and stops his hands from reaching out at the exact moment he remembers why he couldn’t do that anymore - then it starts all over again.</p><p>and he is sorry, <em> so fucking sorry every day</em>, so much so in fact that everyone has convinced themselves this is no more someone grieving a friend than they are obsessing over death. </p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>there is a brief moment kakashi thinks maybe there is an after to his end.</p><p>because the friend who died is suddenly not dead and it takes all of him not to take his borrowed eye out right then and there if that meant he would just <em> stay </em> this time.</p><p>but he quickly realizes that he doesn’t even have to because obito already had another one. a throbbing, purple eye he had no problem reminding them over and over the amount of raw power it yielded. </p><p>for someone he last remembered not being able to hurt even a single fly, this stranger who was once a friend demonstrated no particular care to disposing of body bags and human hearts like they could very well be pesky insects that had the misfortune of annoying him.</p><p>and kakashi wants to scream at this person who had obito's face, take his own heart out if it meant this one could have one again, mend everything broken inside him like infant bones that fractured from fallen trees, rip every skin behind the mask layer by layer until he finally finds who he’s looking for - because where did he go wrong? at what point in time did they become so distant he couldn’t even recognise this faceless man he grieved for two decades? </p><p>he didn’t know, he didn’t fucking know. if only he did, he would have done things so much differently. he would have insisted on going back another hundredth time and scoured the bridge all over again, nevermind he has memorised every nook and cranny, because apparently he still fucking missed <em> something</em>.</p><p>kakashi moved heaven and hell one time, he could do it again.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>the last time it happens, they are much older.</p><p>with more inches to their height and wars gone through and deaths grieved, only this time there is no moment of silence or highlight reels or feeble attempts to conceal anything.</p><p>there are only two boys out in the open – because kakashi and obito were never really men so much as <em>products</em> <em>of circumstance</em> that forced them to grow up <em>earlier than they should have</em> so maybe they have the rest of the world fooled with their ever-growing physique and wisdom beyond their years.</p><p>but then their shared eye always saw past everything – even themselves, <em>especially </em>themselves.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>much like the first time they met, it is still kakashi stunned beyond belief.</p><p>because since that day in the playground he has copied every jutsu known in existence and read too many books about death and yet there is <em> absolutely nothing </em> in his famed arsenal that could have prepared him for this again.</p><p>unlike the sputtering seven year old he was in the hospital room, obito feels a sense of lightness overcome the decade-long murmur in his heart. </p><p>in that special moment hovering in the middle of the in-between, he allows himself the childlike vulnerability he denied himself for so long and takes comfort in the fact there is no one else in the world he would rather spend this with.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>but for all the past they lost and all the future they could have had, kakashi can’t find it in himself to do anything else.</p><p>not yell or scream or cry or weep; nothing but ride this out with him because until that point he has spent so long running from death and its not like he’s never tried but every time he does his right eye spasms just a little so he apologizes to its owner because he <em>made a</em> <em>promise, goddamn it </em>–</p><p>and live for both of them he will.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>there are no words, because they were never really good with them.</p><p>
  <em> (obito argues the morale speech he gave in the bamboo forest was a spur-of-the-moment thing, kakashi disagrees) </em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>there are no deathbed wishes, because they’ve learned from the last time.</p><p>
  <em> (kakashi hopes maybe they could have been given more time, obito agrees) </em>
</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>there is a holding of hands, because this interconnected thing their fingers do is one thing they – their entire team – are good at. </p><p>but kakashi doesn’t hold on to his hand like it’s his last lifeline in the sinking ocean that is his entire life, and obito doesn’t cling on to this one like he’s imprinting the last physical connection he has with the world before he goes ahead. </p><p>because they have lived this moment every day since twelve in various scenarios and masks but always the same people underneath. </p><p>there is nothing else to be said or done for two boys-not-men the world has made to live with too much suffering, yet kakashi knows he is the unlucky one – for being the one left behind again, for losing and gaining, and losing again a part of his life he owed all of to.</p><p>so they stay like that for a while. </p><p>in that comfortable silence like lukewarm friends learning to be warm or cradle to grave friends preparing for the beginning of the end, they easily slip into what they were before this war or kannabi or life ever happened.</p><p> </p><hr/><p> </p><p>they are simply kakashi and obito for the last time.</p><p><em>at least we were able to say </em><b><em>goodbye</em></b> <b><em>as</em></b> <b><em>friends</em></b><em>, not enemies.</em></p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>i don't usually include personal notes but this one is a little close to my heart, i just hope it was as enjoyable of an experience to you reading as it was for me writing it. happy obitober! ♡</p></blockquote></div></div>
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